


Ending/Beginning

by Ravenspear



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-12
Updated: 2011-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenspear/pseuds/Ravenspear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam is dying. Balthazar is a thief. A prelude in two parts</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ending/Beginning

_Get up. Piss. Drink some water. Try the door. Back to bed. Don't waste energy; your muscles are eating themselves. Sleep._

_Repeat._

_Repeat._

_Repeat._

\---

Adam wakes up, and he's dying.

He hasn't had food in... He hasn't had food in a _very_ long while.

He doesn't want to get up from the bed.

He does anyway.

His legs are weak when he puts his weight on them, and he keeps stumbling on his way to the bathroom. When he gets there, he's too tired to stand and piss, so he sits instead. Which is stupid, because getting up again is a lot harder on him, he thinks.

His hands shake as he washes them, and afterwards he nearly spills his glass of water. He almost doesn't drink another one, but he forces himself, and he finds it's easier if he holds the glass with both hands.

On the way back to bed, he tries the door. It's still locked. He doesn't bother calling out.

When he crawls back into bed, he's exhausted.

He sleeps.

\---

Adam wakes up, and he's dying.

He punches a pillow.

He cries.

He gets up, he stumbles to the bathroom. He takes a piss, he drinks his two glasses of water, he tries the door.

He sleeps.

\---

Adam wakes up, and he's dying.

He'd been dreaming of Hell.

After he's pissed, and after drinking his water, he stands in the shower, leaning against the wall until his bones don't feel like ice anymore.

The door is still locked.

He sleeps.

\---

Adam wakes up, and he's dying.

He misses Crowley. He misses Roy.

When you start missing the evil demons that have been holding you for possible future ransom, your life really is a sad, sad thing.

He forces himself out of bed. Piss, drink, door.

He sleeps.

\---

Adam wakes up, and he's dying.

He wants to die _faster_. Wants to _stop_.

He doesn't want to die faster. Can't stop.

He's not sure where he'd go if he dies; Heaven or Hell.

Not that it matters. They both mean the same thing.

 _Michael_.

He grits his teeth.

He gets up, struggles to the bathroom. He stands to piss, he drinks his goddamn water.

He gives the door the finger.

He sleeps.

\---

Adam wakes up to the sound of the door opening.

"And behind door number three... Well, well. What _do_ we have here?"

The angel's eyes are grey like stormclouds.

Adam closes his eyes in resignation.

Fine. Heaven it is.

 

* * *

 

"Oh, _Crowley_. You bad, _bad_ man," Balthazar mumbles, smirking as he thumbs through an old manuscript detailing the Sacrament of the Four Daughter-Winds. "If I'd known you had something like this just lying around, I'd have robbed you while you were still alive."

He slips the manuscript into one of his already almost overflowing bags, and he _really_ should have known to bring a few more; the safe house might be just one of many, but Crowley had been one _hell_ of a collector, if one could pardon the pun.

He throws an appraising eye at a beautiful maquahuitl, in _pristine_ condition, but decides against it when the spirit trapped inside it hisses malevolently. Probably more trouble than it is worth, even if it _is_ a very pretty little bauble.

The last room of Crowley's little storage house is significantly less warded than any of the others, but the door is sturdier; reinforced, and with a heavy-duty deadbolt, the same kind that had adorned the front door in a group of three.

"Trying to keep something _in_ , were you, old boy?" Balthazar mutters. "Curioser and curioser..."

The wards don't take very long to break; about five minutes, and that's only because Balthazar can't move his human lips any faster for the recitations. If he could have spoken them with his _real_ mouth he would have been on the way to the next safe house _hours_ ago. But, Crowley had, in addition to a snappy dresser and a collector of all manner of wonderful things, been a very, _very_ paranoid man, and the barest hint of wing or halo would have sent the wards of this place screaming to incinerate everything inside. So the slow way it has to be.

The deadbolt is another matter entirely. Disallowed his angelic powers, Balthazar glares at it. Then, sighing, he gets to his knees and once again pulls his shiny new lockpicks out of the inside pocket of his jacket. As he inserts the torque tool, then works the lockpick in after it, he wonders if maybe he should invest in a power drill before... _salvaging_... the next safe house. Just to save some time.

But then again, he thinks, as he slowly depresses pin after pin, lockpicking is a much more charming way of going about it. And then he turns the torque tool, and the deadbolt is disengaged. Balthazar smiles.

Getting up, he brushes imaginary dust off his knees, and opens the door. "And behind door number three..."

In the room, there is a bed. On the bed, there is a boy.

"Well, well," Balthazar says, lips curling up into a lazy smirk. "What _do_ we have here?"

The boy stares at him for a few seconds with empty, bloodshot eyes, before closing them and sighing.

" _Hm_." Balthazar raises an eyebrow. "Well, I can't say I ever took Crowley for the kind to keep a bedslave. Tsk, tsk. You think you know a person..." He shrugs, then peers into the bathroom, then the wardrobe, just in case there might be something interesting in there. There isn't.

"...What?" the boy asks, voice dry and raspy, and when Balthazar looks back at him, his eyes are open again, and confusion is written on his pale, drawn face.

"Pardon?"

"You're not here to take me back?" he asks, and there is the _tiniest_ spark in his eyes when he says it, of hope and relief and possibly a hint of _joy_. It's all quite intriguing.

"Back to where?" Balthazar asks, moving a bit closer to the bed, so he can really _see_ the boy. He looks sick; weak and macerated. Probably because he hasn't been fed since Crowley's death, which Balthazar rather suspects is quite unhealthy for a normal human body.

"To Heaven," the boy replies.

And yes, that is very intriguing _indeed_.

"Why? Should I?"

The boy closes down again at the question, face slack, his eyes going dead and cold again as he turns away, staring into the wall.

Wheels turn in Balthazar's mind. Someone that Heaven might want, and that Crowley might have...

And then there is the memory of Sam Winchester, the boy fished out of the pit without his soul.

" _Ooh_. I _see_ ," Balthazar mutters, and he finds himself grinning as he sits down on the bed. "You're the long lost little Winchester. Michael's second best."

Adam doesn't flinch, but there's a twitch in his eyelids, and Balthazar almost laughs. "Well, you needn't worry, young mister Milligan. I have no obligation, or indeed any great interest, in delivering you to my brothers. Mostly because they'd be quite likely to stab me if I even tried."

The boy's eyes flicker briefly back to him, and his forehead creases in a frown.

Balthazar decides to answer the question, unspoken though it is. "Oh, me? I'm somewhat of a black sheep. An... independent contractor, you might say."

Adam doesn't say anything, and doesn't look back at him. Just lies there, impassive and dull.

Balthazar takes the opportunity to study him. The boy certainly doesn't look well, sick and dirty as he is, but it's easy enough for Balthazar to ignore that, to focus on the lines of his body, the angles of bone, to imagine what he'd look like, healthy and hale. Balthazar imagines he'd be quite pretty. And Balthazar _likes_ pretty.

But, just like with the wood and obsidian sword in the other room, pretty is not always worth the bother of taking it home with you.

"Well, it was nice meeting you, Adam," Balthazar says, getting up from the bed. He waits for a reaction, but Adam remains still, staring indifferently at the wall.

Balthazar shrugs, and goes to collect his bags. There are seven of them, and they are all irritatingly bulky and unwieldy, and as much as it galls him, he'll have to walk them to the door in sets of two.

 _Walking_. Balthazar feels indignation at just the word.

The indignation only gets worse when he stubs his toe on a doorsill, and he decides that if Crowley wasn't already dead, he'd kill the bastard for these ridiculous wards.

When he fetches his last bag, he throws another speculative look at the maquahuitl. It would, after all, go _oh_ so very nicely with the chimalli he picked up in Madrid.

The spirit hisses at him again.

"Oh, _do_ shut up," he tells it as he grabs his bag. "You're not impressing anyone."

The spirit stops hissing, but he's pretty sure he can _feel_ it glaring at him all the way out of the room.

Closing the door in the spirit's proverbial face, he stands in the hallway, and _considers_.

On the one hand, the boy is _very_ pretty. On the _other_ hand, humanity is a messy, difficult thing, and dealing with one sounds far less interesting than Balthazar might want to deal with on a regular basis.

But then, on a wing, there is that tiny, _infinitesimal_ glimpse of feeling underneath the boy's stubborn mask of passivity and emotionlessness.

And if there is anything Balthazar likes more than a pretty thing, it's a pretty _challenge_.

Adam is on the floor when he reenters the boy's room, facedown halfway to the door and breathing hard, jaws clenched as he tries to work up the energy to get up and go the rest of the distance.

A fighter. Balthazar likes that too.

"Well, I did set out to rob Crowley," he says as he slings the bag onto his back and leans down to pick the boy up. "Might as well rob him thoroughly."

Adam doesn't comment on being treated like property, and doesn't remove his arms from where Balthazar arranges them around his neck, but there _is_ the slightest twitch of his eyelids.

Balthazar grins.


End file.
